In many developing countries or rural areas, it may only be a small portion of the population who have access to banking services from traditional brick-and-mortar banks. In such areas, a bank may be physically located too far away for a majority of the population to travel to. And even if a bank is nearby, it may be the only bank location in the vicinity of a vast region covering a large number of the population. The brick-and-mortar bank may not have the resources and capacity to adequately support such a large number of customers, possibly resulting in long waiting times and inconvenience for the bank's customers. In most developing countries, building additional bank branches and/or installing automated teller machines (ATMs) at various locations are often not viable solutions due to the high costs of the complex infrastructure involved.
In recent years, the use of mobile devices in developing countries has grown rapidly. As such, one way of providing these communities with access to financial and/or banking services is to enable users of mobile devices to perform mobile transactions, such as making mobile payments or money transfers, or checking account balances or performing other account related services, directly from their mobile devices. However, security concerns are often a stumbling block that hinders the wide adoption and growth of mobile banking.
Most mobile devices, especially older generation models that are typically used in developing countries, lack the capability to securely send end-to-end encrypted communication. As a result, sensitive information, such as a Personal Identification Numbers (PINs) and Primary Account Numbers (PANs), might be sent in plaintext form, creating a vulnerability in which such sensitive information can be intercepted by malicious parties and be used for fraudulent purposes.
Secure elements have been provided in an attempt to mitigate mobile devices' vulnerability to fraudulent attack, however there may still be weaknesses not addressed by such secure elements.
There is accordingly a need for a solution which addresses these and other problems, at least to some extent.